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A HISTORICAL REVIEW. 



Hon. MELLEN CHAMBERLAIN, LL.D. 



1 



I 




THE HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF 
THE UNITED STATES. 



A REVIEW OF McMASTER'S HISTORY. 



BY 

Hon. MELLEN CHAMBERLAIN, LL. D. 



[Reprinted froivi the Andover Review for June, 1886.] 



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1886. 



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McMASTER'S HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF THE 
UNITED STATES. 

Mr. John Bach McMaster has undertaken to write the his- 
tory of the people of the United States, from the Revolution to 
the Civil War, in five volumes, two of which, bringing the narra- 
tive down into Jefferson's administration, have already appeared. 
The first, published in 1883, was favorably received by critics as 
well as by the public ; and the second, which has recently ap- 
peared, shows no loss of vigor in its execution or of interest in its 
materials. A new history of the United States should be its own 
excuse for being. Mr. McMaster's work is undoubtedly a positive 
contribution to history, and by its excellences no less than by its 
defects will provoke criticism. This should be so ; for one of the 
promises of a better literature, is our discontent with what we al- 
ready have. 

It need not be said of '>*he .first edition of a work dealing with a 
great variety of facts, that errors have crept into it, or that some 
things essential to completeness have been overlooked, or that 
some unwarranted conclusions have been drawn from authorities 
cited in their support. Such errors and defects are inevitable. 

Mr. McMaster possesses manifest qualifications for writing his- 
tory. To say of a historian that he is honest, that he collects his 
materials industriously and allows them to stand for what they 
are worth, without foisting upon them a partisan or sectarian 
theory, ought to sound as strange as when said of a judicial magis- 
trate. But it does not ; and when such things can be truly said 
of a writer of history, it is very high praise. Mr. McMaster's 
industry is marvelous, even to those familiar with similar re- 
searches. He overlooks some things, but he conceals nothing. 
We may conjecture the direction of his sympathies in respect to 
the great political parties which were forming during the early 
stages of his history, but there is no lack of candor in dealing 
with them, and he dares to look even Washington in the face. 



4 The History of the People of the United States. 

This has not always been so. Charles Thomson, the patriotic 
secretary of the old Congress, wrote its history, which he intended 
to publish ; but his courage failed at the pinch, and he burnt it. 
We might guess his reasons, even if he had not given them, when 
we read the " Diary of John Adams." 

Mr. McMaster entitles his work " A History of the People of 
the United States," and thereby indicates an intention which is 
more fully avowed in his introductory chapter. He says that 
in the course of his narrative " much, indeed, must be written of 
wars, conspiracies, and rebellions ; of presidents, of congresses, of 
embassies, of treaties, of the ambition of political leaders in the 
senate-house, and of the rise of great parties in the nation. Yet 
the history of the people shall be the chief theme." 

He makes no claim to originality in drawing this distinction 
between the history of the people and of the nation to which they 
belong. In 1879 John Richard Green, whose early death was a 
loss to letters, published a " Short History of the English People," 
in which he proposed " to pass lightly and briefly over the details 
of foreign wars and diplomacies, the personal adventures of kings 
and nobles, the pomp of courts, or the intrigues of favorites, and 
to dwell at length on the incidents of that constitutional and so- 
cial advance in which we read the history of the nation itself." 
To Mr. Green's authority for this theory of what makes the his- 
tory of the English people Mr. McMaster has now added his own 
for a similar theory of the history of the people of the United 
States. But Mr. Green's ideas upon English history appear to be 
questioned by high authority, presently to be adverted to ; and it 
is proposed to offer in this paper some special considerations which 
make them less applicable to the history of the United States. 

The success of Mr. Green's history was immediate and brilliant, 
— only equaled by that of Macaulay's historical essays and of his 
" History of England." But this success was due, in part at 
least, to Mr. Green's rare historical insight, to his condensation 
and artistic grouping of materials, and to his singularly pure and 
attractive style. His theory also gained adherents as a protest 
against that class of historical compositions in which wars, the do- 
ings of courts and parliaments, and foreign relations were treated 
as the staple of history, while the progress of literature, of science, 
of art, and of manners was relegated in brief summaries — as 
notably by Hume — to the end of a chapter. Hildreth, whose 
history is one of the best, rigorously excluded from it everything 
like a theory of politics, and, to make amends, published an ex- 



The History of the People of the United States. 5 

cellent one as a separate treatise, and cynically commended it to 
the attention of " such critics as have complained that his history 
of the United States had no 'philosophy ' in it." 

But Mr. Green's scheme of history seems to be challenged by 
Professor Seeley in his " Expansion of England," who regards the 
progress of a people in literature, art, and manners as properly 
belonging to the history of the " general progress that the human 
race everywhere alike, and therefore also in England, may chance 
to be making ; " and that such matters would be more fittingly 
treated, as they have been, in the history of literature in England. 

Chi the other hand, he considers that " history has to do with 
the state ; that it investigates the growth and changes of a certain 
corporate society, which acts through certain functionaries and 
certain assemblies. By the nature of the state every person who 
lives in a certain territory is usually a member of it, but history 
is not concerned with individuals, except in their capacity of 
members of a state. That a man in England makes a scientific 
discovery or paints a picture is not in itself an event in the his- 
tory of England. Individuals are important in history in pro- 
portion not to their intrinsic merit, but to their relation to the 
state. Socrates was a much greater man than Cleon, but Cleon 
has a much greater space in Thucydides. Newton was a greater 
man than Harley, yet it is Harley, not Newton, who fixes the at- 
tention of the historian of the reign of Queen Anne." 

These extracts indicate that Mr. Green and Professor Seeley 
were not in accord respecting the scope and proper limitations of 
the history of England ; and yet neither could push his views to 
extremes. Although Mr. Green passes lightly and briefly over 
foreign wars and the intrigues of courts, they form no inconsid- 
erable part of his history when comprised in a single volume, and 
a still greater part when, in a new edition, that volume is ex- 
panded into four. And, on the other hand. Professor Seeley 
would often find himself in the presence of unorganized forces, 
not belonging to the state and having no direct relation to it, yet 
visibly affecting it, and therefore to be taken into historical ac- 
count. 

But even if Mr. Green's theory of the history of England is 
correct, it does not follow that it is applicable to that of the United 
States ; for there is a wide difference between the two nations, 
and an appreciation of this difference is vital to the verity of 
our history. Louis XIV., without exaggeration, might exclaim, 
" I am the state ; " and there was a time in England when the 



6 The History of the People of the United States. 

phrase, " King, Lords, and Commons " expressed the existence of 
a deep gulf between these factors in the constitution and the elec- 
tors of the Commons. They constituted only one sixth of the 
people, and did not include the citizens of such great towns as 
Liverpool, Manchester, and Birmingham, And there was a still 
deeper gulf between these electors and the great body of unrepre- 
sented people. Nor was there on one side of this chasm knowl- 
edge, wisdom, and virtue, and on the other weakness, ignorance, 
and vice. For neither literature nor religion, save so far as it was 
political, had recognized relations to the state, or direct influence 
in the management of its affairs. 

But Mr. McMaster finds no such state of affairs here. From 
the day when Englishmen first appeared on this continent in or- 
ganized societies, the people and the state have been interchange- 
able terms ; and everything included in one is also included in 
the other. Nor will the history of either permit the exclusion of 
wars, conspiracies, or rebellions, or the according to them less than 
their just prominence among those causes which have made the 
United States what they are to-day. What things constitute the 
proper subject of history, and their relative importance in its nar- 
rative, is determinable only by the completeness and verity of his- 
tory. 

The history of the United States is without pageantry or splen- 
dor, but it is unique ; and upon a due appreciation of its character, 
and a conformity to the requirements of a truthful setting forth of 
it, will chiefly depend its usefulness not only to us, but to foreign 
nations, which seem to be sensible to the value of the facts which 
lie behind it, if not to the felicity of their literary expression. 

This history may be briefly outlined. The English colonies in 
North America, with some political and religious diversities, be- 
gan their organic life on this soil under substantially the same 
conditions, which continued down to the Revolution. Whether 
they were crown-provinces, or had obtained chai'ters from the 
king, or from the proprietaries, or had organized under their pat- 
ents, they had moulded these various powers into constitutions of 
government which, in 1775, gave a higher sanction to armed re- 
sistance to royal authority than any wrongs they had suffered, or 
any wrongs they feared. A strange, unique history ! Thirteen 
incorporated land companies — for such was their legal character 
— developed, with only a nominal adherence to their acts of incor- 
poration, into thirteen independent, constitutional governments. 
This is what they had accomplished at the close of the Revolution : 



The History of the People of the United States. 7 

not union, then ; or nationality. These, in all but the name, 
belong to our own day ; and, like the first, are the results of civil 
war. 

When we look at these colonies as organized societies we find, 
as we find nowhere else, that the people and the state were identi- 
cal. The state was the people " as a mode of action." In other 
lands a king, or a king's mistress, or a cabal, made wars, in- 
vaded personal and public rights, and ruined finances ; but if an 
American colony was turbulent or disobedient, it was the turbu- 
lence and disobedience of the people ; if wars were waged, or em- 
bassies dispatched, it was by their order ; if schools, colleges, or 
churches were set up and maintained, it was because the people 
willed it ; and if, at one time, the covenant was held in its rigor, 
and at a later time, in a modified form, it was the voice of the peo- 
ple speaking through the General Court, or a synod, that so or- 
dained. 

Contrast this state of affairs with what prevailed even in Eng- 
land, in which alone, of the European nations, popular ideas had 
made any considerable progress. On the side of the political or- 
ganization called the state were arrayed many prerogatives no 
longer based on reason : the power of making war and peace irre- 
spective of pojjular sentiment, and all those agencies which were 
clothed with the insignia of nationality. Apart from and over 
against the state, but having certain relations to it, were the peo- 
ple, among whom might be found art, science, literature, and all 
those social and moral forces which do not depend upon the state 
for their efiiciency. Where such distinctions exist between the 
people and their government, a history of the English people may 
be something apart from the history of England ; but the essen- 
tial correlation of the people and the government of the United 
States — in fact, their identity — makes the history of the people, 
so far as it implies a distinction, a political and historical sole- 
cism. 

Apparently Mr. McMaster intended such a distinction, to judge 
by the title of his history, and from the fact that in the history 
itself, he has passed over in silence, or relegated to a subordinate 
place, those matters which do not have a direct relation to what 
is called the progress of society, using the term comprehensively. 

Mr. McMaster's history opens in the midst of a sad, shameful 
period of our national life, if we accept the pictures he paints of 
it ; and that they are drawn with a general fidelity to truth there 
can be no doubt. But it is equally true that the people sujffer 



8 The History of the People of the United States. 

undeservedly in reputation by this division of their history in 
the middle of an important epoch, the whole of which is essen- 
tial to a right understanding of its parts. The treaty of peace 
in 1783, with which Mr. McMaster's history opens, is an appar- 
ent, instead of a real, landmark in our history. Essentially, it 
was a political recognition of a fact accomplished by the capitula- 
tion of Cornwallis nearly two years before. By beginning his 
history at the time which he has selected, the people are not only 
denied the period of their glory, but also of the presentation of 
those circumstances which extenuate their shame. On the 19th of 
April, 1775, the war for independence opened with spirit, and it 
was carried on with courage and self-devotion. For undisciplined 
soldiers, the troops generally fought fairly well ; and the officers 
were patriotic, if not particularly well educated for the profession 
of arms. Congress and the colonial assemblies exerted themselves 
with vigor, and the people did not lag behind. High-water mark 
of patriotism was reached in those efforts, public and private, which 
were crowned by the surrender of Burgoyne's army in October, 
1777. With this event the people hoped the war would end ; but 
it turned out otherwise, and the disasters at Brandywine, in Sep- 
tember, and at Germantown, in October of the same year, fell 
with disheartening effect upon the country. This soon began to 
appear. Enlistments gradually fell off from 46,901 in 1776 to 
13,832 in 1781, the last year of the war ; and the actual payments 
on military account, during the same period, dwindled from 
$21,000,000 to 12,000,000.1 The people were becoming tired of 
the war, with its merciless drain upon their resources ; and when 
the French army, with its ample military chest, took the field, 
there was danger lest the further prosecution of the contest would 
depend upon French men and French money. Jobbery and self- 
seeking were as rife as in the last years of the late civil war. 
The unpaid soldiers were mutinous, and traitors near Washing- 
ton's person corruptly revealed his plans to Clinton almost as 
soon as they were formed. Congress was torn with dissensions, 
and its proceedings were marked by incapacity and indecision. 
And the colonial assemblies were no better. In the dire ex- 
tremity of the army, — its ranks depleted, its military chest 
empty,, the soldiers destitute of food and clothing, — requisitions 
were treated with indifference and almost contempt. This was 

^ These and similai* figures in this paper express facts only in a general 
way, and for any more exact purpose are to be received with caution, al- 
though found in respectable authorities. 



The History of the People of the United States. 9 

the beginning of a state of affairs which continued some years 
after the time at which Mr. McMaster opens his history of the 
people. Few more humiliating stories than those he relates can 
be found in the annals of the Anglo-Saxon race : the treatment 
of the old soldiers ; the barbarities practiced on the refugee loyal- 
ists ; the continual disregard of Congressional requisitions for the 
support of the government ; the Newburgh Address ; the violent 
resistance to the administration of justice ; the hostile legislation 
between the colonies ; the proposed issue of irredeemable paper- 
money for the purpose, openly avowed, of defrauding creditors. 
These, and other similar acts, threatened political and social an- 
archy. Nevertheless, the people did not fall into anarchy. On 
the contrary, government performed its functions, and steadily 
moved forward in the development of more complete and efficient 
forms. And if the history of the people in its entirety from 
1774 to 1789 be taken into account, as in fairness it ought to be, 
though sorely tried, they were patient, courageous, prodigal of 
themselveg and of their money, and worthy of the highest enco- 
miums. Their history is the history of a period. Men who 
signed the Address to the King in 1774 also signed the Constitu- 
tion of the United States in 1787 ; and during this time — less 
than half that assigned to a generation — what labors and suffer- 
ings did they not endure, what depths of humiliation did they not 
sound, what heights of glory did they not tread, — these men, less 
than three millions, who, in resistance to parliamentary taxation, 
put nearly three hundred thousand troops into the field, raised 
and paid out from the general treasury above a hundred millions 
of dollars, proclaimed and secured independence, changed their 
colonial governments without passing through a period of an- 
archy, quelled intestine commotions, entered into union, and estab- 
lished a national government which secured their prosperity and 
happiness ! What people, in a time so brief, ever achieved so much? 
Nevertheless, they were very human. Sometimes they faltered ; 
sometimes they lost heart, and even their heads ; but they recovered 
both in season to prevent irretrievable disaster, and finally accom- 
plished their great purpose. Now anything less than this history 
in its entii-ety, however faithful it may be in details, is injurious 
to their just fame, and loses its value for example or warning. 
Their mistakes, weaknesses and vacillation undoubtedly form a 
part of their history ; and so do those great achievements and 
characteristics by which they finally triumphed. The remnant 
that were wise, constant, and virtuous were the people, — the 



10 The History of the People of the United States. 

Washingtons, Greenes, and Sumters, not the Arnolds, Conways, 
and Parsonses. In determining the character of the people of the 
Revolution, as a whole, it is not a question of majority. The men 
are to be weighed, not counted. On the side where the idtimate 
force majeure was found, there the people were to be found, — 
whether in the majority or in the minority no matter ; and if the 
outcome of their endeavor was success, then were the people in- 
telligent and wise ; and if it was beneficent, then were they virtu- 
ous. The period from 1774 to 1789 was a period of rebellion, 
revolution, and reconstruction. But it will never be understood 
so long as it is regarded as an exceptional epoch in our history ; 
for from the first day that organized English colonies were planted 
on American soil they began to rebel, to make revolutions, and to 
form constitutions. This they continued to do in clear political 
sequence, with scarcely a break, down to the day when they found 
themselves under a stable government of their own. This is true 
of all the colonies, and the essential political history of each is 
the history of every other. The history of their governments and 
of their peoples is one and inseparable ; and their several peoples 
were one people, — an organism with functions of scarcely distin- 
guishable honor or usefulness. There were no rich, no poor ; no 
high, no low ; no wise, no ignorant ; no virtuous, no vicious, in the 
European sense of these terms. 

It is doubtful, therefore, whether this history can be adequately 
told in a series of monographs, or if the history of the people 
be severed from that of the political constitutions which expressed 
the popular sentiment. But if this is attempted, the series cer- 
tainly should include one on the people themselves ; for few sub- 
jects are more interesting or instructive than the changes in the 
character of the people of the United States between the landing 
at Jamestown and the period which closes Mr. McMaster's second 
volume. For such a history we could well spare, or pass lightly 
over, some other matters. History ought to be made interesting, 
if verity in the general effect can be preserved. But many enter- 
taining subjects are of secondary importance. We need not be 
told — certainly not with much detail — that in a new country, 
remote from great centres of wealth and civilization, roads were 
bad, bridges few or none, hotels execrable, books . rare, and news- 
papers lacking their modern features. Such a condition of things 
marks only a stage of material progress, — not of civilization. 
Refined and cultivated communities have often found themselves 
surrounded by similar circumstances in the past, and so will others 



The History of the People of the United States. 11 

in the future. The essential character o£ the people is vastly 
more important. 

At the time Mr. McMaster's history opens, Englishmen and 
their descendants, with slight admixture of other blood, had lived 
for a hundred and fifty years on this soil, under climate and influ- 
ences widely differing from those to which their race for a thou- 
sand years had been accustomed. What changes had these new 
conditions produced in the physical, intellectual, or moral char- 
acter of these Anglo-Americans ? On its native soil the race had 
wrought great things and acquired a great character. Less by 
military genius than by courage and indomitable pluck, it had 
waged successful wars. Eapacious in conquest and greedy of the 
commercial results of colonization, yet it was the most equitable 
of nations in dealing with its dependencies, save Ireland, and 
most benign in forming governments for them. Nor was this 
greatness of the past alone ; for recently, under the inspiration of 
Pitt's genius, its spirit, bursting insular bounds, had shone with 
unsurpassed splendor. There was no continent and no clime that 
did not witness it. In Europe, on the field of Rosbach, it had 
upheld the hands of Frederick the Great, as he repelled the last 
assault on Continental Protestantism. At Plassy<it had opened a 
new empire in India. On the sea it had humbled the power of 
Spain ; and on the Plains of Abraham it had destroyed the empire 
of France in America. No people in modern times had reached 
such heights of national glory. Nor were their moral victories less 
splendid. The nameless horrors of prisons were abolished; the 
slave-trade was destroyed ; the penal code mitigated ; a reform bill 
passed, and moral instruction carried to the cottages of the lowly, 
— achievements which conferred lustre on such names as Howard, 
Clarkson, Wilberforce, Burke, Romilly, and Hannah More. 

With such affiliations, with such inheritances, with such stimu- 
lating examples in the elder bi'anch of the race, how did the 
younger branch bear itself in its western home ? From their first 
coming to these shores to the fall of the French empire in America 
their work, though difficult, had been simple : to subdue a wilder- 
ness and its savage inhabitants ; to develop seK-government under 
the conditions imposed by their charters ; and to promote religion, 
education, and social progress. But after the fall of the French 
power a new, complicated, and difficult problem confronted them : 
to subvert the disastrous commercial policy of the empire, peace- 
ably if possible, but to subvert it at all hazards ; to disrupt the 
empire itself when the necessity became inevitable ; to declare 



12 The History of the People of the United States. 

and maintain independence ; to change colonial governments into 
independent states, without intervening anarchy ; to form and 
establish union under a frame of government which should rec- 
ognize the autonomy of those states, while it embraced them all 
under a federal jurisdiction. 

No people had ever undertaken a more difficult work, or accom- 
plished it more successfully. England, in the days of Cromwell, 
attempted a permanent change of her government, and failed con- 
spicuously. Later, France also failed in a similar endeavor pros- 
ecuted by methods at which mankind stood aghast. 

But the American people have succeeded where those of England 
and of France miscarried. Chance and circumstances doubtless 
had something to do with this difference in results, but it was 
mainly owing to difference in character. The Anglo-American 
had acquired an element of character which did not belong to his 
British progenitor. Whatever he may have lost, he had gained 
the power of organization ; and without this power he must have 
failed. This requires explanation. To the typical Englishman, 
the unit of force was the individual man ; to the typical American, 
it was an organization. The force which reformed English prisons 
was John Howard ; the force which reformed American prisons 
was the Prison Discipline Society. And something like this dif- 
ference in modes of action has distinguished the two branches of 
the race in those great movements which constitute the glory and 
the hope of the age. 

This change in methods of action began in necessity. The 
first comers recognized it at once, and, with that practical sagacity 
which has always characterized them, they proceeded to organize 
themselves into a state-militant as a protection against an insidi- 
ous foe ; into a church-militant to deal summarily with intruding 
heretics ; into town governments for the conduct of communal 
affairs; into school districts to carry education to every man's 
door ; into watch-and-ward divisions for protection against fire 
and midnight marauders. And these people have lived and 
breathed and had their being in organizations ever since, and with 
manifest advantages, especially at the outset ; for not only was 
every man utilized, leaving none superfluous or idle, but utilized 
for every conceivable exigency of the state, of which he became 
a |)art in a manner before unknown. And the value of this per- 
vasive system of organization was even more manifest, when, in 
the fullness of time, barely two millions and a half of people 
were arrayed in resistance to the most powerful empire of the 



The History of the People of the United States. 13 

world. Never did any race exhibit such power of organization, 
or put it to such efficient use, as did the colonists during the 
American Revolution. Town governments, committees of safety, 
committees of correspondence, inter-colonial associations, extem- 
porized provincial congresses, and even organized mobs kept well 
in hand by Samuel Adams and Isaac Sears to strike in exigencies 
where legal methods were inefficient, not only successfully resisted 
the power of Great Britain, but subverted the royal provincial 
governments, without violence, by provincial congresses which 
took their place ad interim. 

We can seldom trace a national habit to its origin, but in this 
instance we may. It was due to their colonial charters ; for the ac- 
ceptance of a charter was in itself an act of organization, and the 
corporate existence in conformity to its provisions compelled the im- 
mediate organization of all those institutions, or their equivalents, 
such as legislatures, courts, towns, military companies, and the like, 
which on English soil, in the course of ages, had grown up without 
organization. A new necessity formed a new habit. And the 
habit once formed, the people organized themselves in all possible 
relations to the colonial state, and finally to all religious, social, 
and moral enterprises. Happily for them, also, the acceptance of 
charters changed their natural relations to the parent country into 
organic political relations to the Crown which engaged the power 
of the state for their protection from domestic anarchy and foreign 
foes. The lack of this advantage, which can hardly be over- 
estimated, is manifest in the unhappy condition of those colonies 
— of which Rhode Island is an example — which were without 
charters, or acquired them too late. This was not fully understood 
by either party at the time ; but we now see that when Charles I. 
signed a colonial charter, he signed an instrument which, in the 
hands of the colonists, became an incipient declaration of inde- 
pendence to disturb all his successors ; and the fact that the Eng- 
lish colonies were lands held of the crown, or were corporations 
within the realm for extra-territorial purposes, and as such crea- 
ted certain reciprocal rights and duties, is the master-key which 
unlocks their political history from Jamestown to Lexington. 

This acquired faculty of organization still abides, and is used 
for the accomplishment of every conceivable purpose, and perhaps 
threatens to impair the force of individual action in great enter- 
prises. But it ought not to be overlooked in the history of the 
people of the United States ; for to it the people owe their inde- 
pendence. It is their greatest contribution to the science of prac- 



14 The History of the People of the United States. 

tical politics, and its use is becoming common and efficient in other 
lands. ^ 

But it is in the state that our history mainly centres, and there 
it must be sought ; for by the government have been accomplished 
those ends which most powerfully effected not only the material 
prosperity of the people, but also their national character. It was 
by a foreign treaty that the people gained a recognized position 
among the nations ; by the same treaty their rights in the fish- 
eries were restored, and thus was formed a nursery of hardy sea- 
men who, when free play was given to their spirit, challenged 
England's assumed sovereignty of the seas ; and it was the same 
treaty which opened the Mississippi to the turbulent commerce 
which poured down from its tributaries. The ordinance of 1787 
— which Mr. McMaster has passed over without endeavoring to 
unravel its intricate history, and with only slight recognition of 
its character — excluded slavery from the Northwest, and made it 
the home of freemen who now have grown to prosperous millions. 
It was by treaty that Louisiana was purchased in 1803, including 
territory which more than doubled the area of the Union, and 
saved to Anglo-American laws, customs, and manners the vast 
regions beyond the great river. It was through the Assumption 
Act and the Funding System that Hamilton " touched the dead 
corpse of the Public Credit, and it sprung upon its feet," — acts 
whose moral significance is found in the fact that the public credit 
has ever since been without stain, that specie payment was re- 
sumed, and that justice was done to the veterans of the civil war. 
Such are some of the themes — " of congresses, of embassies, of 
treaties " — which enter into the real history of the people of the 
United States, and constitute its chief value for the citizen as 

1 De Tocqueville opens the Xllth chapter of his first volume of Demoa-acy 
in Americn with these words : " In no country in the world has the principle of 
association been more successfully used, or applied to a greater multitude of 
objects, than in America ;" bat he states the fact as he found it when he 
wrote, without tracing its historical origin. In the Vth chapter of his second 
volume, he recurs to the subject and asks, " Is this the result of accident ? or 
is there in reality any necessary connection between the principle of association 
and that of equality ? " Apparently he thought there was. But association 
in America is a historical fact which antedates by sixty years the operation 
of politico-philosophical causes. The first act of social existence in the domi- 
nating colony of New England was an act of association which made necessary 
all successive steps in that direction. Equality was scarcely a genetic force in 
a close corporation of landholders into which the prime condition of entrance 
was membership in the established colonial church. Of the general correct- 
ness of De Tocqueville's view, however, there can be little doubt. 



The History of the People of the United States. 15 

well as for the student. They ought not to be crowded into a 
corner ! 

On the other hand, it is noticeable that from the peace of 1783 
to the close of Washington's administration such matters as are 
embraced in the phrase "the progress of society" were almost 
of necessity in abeyance. For during this period the States were 
perfecting the machinery of their several governments, and the 
general government was determining its own powers, and adjust- 
ing its relations to the States. The people were chiefly occupied 
" with wars, conspiracies, rebellions ; with presidents, with con- 
gresses, with embassies, and with treaties," which Mr. McMaster 
regards as of secondary importance. 

But though they were chiefly so concerned, nevertheless molecu- 
lar action was going on which affected their moral and intellec- 
tual character ; it was due, however, neither to the state nor to 
popular action, but to forces entirely overlooked by Mr. McMas- 
ter, or so treated by him as to afford no indication of their 
power. For when Francis Asbury, John Murray, Elhanan Win- 
chester, and Joseph Priestley died, the people of the United 
States were something quite different from what they would have 
been had these Englishmen never lived and labored on American 
soil. Asbury's influence, doubtless, was the most widely and most 
powerfully felt ; and it is, perhaps, no exaggeration to say that 
he saved the West and the Southwest to civilization. For as 
the hardy but illiterate people from the hills of Virginia and the 
Carolinas scaled the AUeghanies, and from their western slopes 
descended into the valley of the Mississippi, it was Asbury and 
the three thousand Methodist preachers ordained by him who 
met and organized them into religious societies, so that within 
twenty years from the peace of 1783 these trans-Alleghanian 
communities were nearly as well supplied with religious institu- 
tions as the older States from which they had emigrated. 

The labors of Murray and Winchester, the apostles of Univer- 
salism, also, were too considerable to be passed silently by in the 
history of the people of the United States, and the same may be 
said of the rehabilitation of Episcopacy by Madison, Seabury, 
Parker, Bass, and White. 

Of Priestley's scientific and political influence we are told 
something, but nothing of his theological opinions, which a little 
later convulsed New England churches, and gained adherents 
from whom came the greater part of our imaginative literature 
even to the present day. 



16 The History of the People of the United States. 

No reasonable exception can be taken to Mr. McMaster's low 
estimate of colonial imaginative literature, and he doubtless places 
a just value — which is high — upon the theological speculations 
of those days, which for acuteness and depth were not surpassed 
by any similar work emanating from the British islands. But*the 
historian should not undervalue the political pamphlets of Otis, 
Hutchinson, the Adamses, Jay, Dickinson, and Livingston, for 
they have not been surpassed either in the discussion of great 
principles or in their application to practical afPairs. The legal 
erudition of those times, also, is almost phenomenal when it is 
considered that from a people without training in legal principles, 
and with a profound distrust of lawyers, there sprang almost at a 
bound, when needed, men such as Gridley, Prat, Adams, Parsons, 
Jay, Dulaney, Wythe, and Marshall, either of whom, with a little 
special training, would have filled with credit the place of Mans- 
field, of Camden, or of Eldon. 

The causes of the literary poverty of men of such large and 
varied general ability opens up an interesting field of speculation, 
but not to be entered upon at this time. 

It is easier to raise questions respecting the history of the people 
of the United States than it is to answer them. Nevertheless, 
such questions are legitimate. For example, Mr. McMaster tells 
us that " in the Southern States education was almost wholly neg- 
lected, but nowhere to such an extent as in South Carolina." And 
yet, from Virginia and the Carolinas emigrated to Kentucky, Ten- 
nessee, and Mississippi a race of men like Andrew Jackson, George 
Rogers Clarke, and John Sevier, who not only wrote good hands 
(as their early autograph letters, preserved in collections, show), 
but who seemed to be fairly educated for civil affairs, and able to 
carry forward, in their new homes, a civilization differing in some 
respects from that of the East, but in no respect inf ei-ior to that of 
the communities they left behind them. These were not the sons 
of wealthy planters, educated at Eton, Winchester, or Hackney, 
or even at William and Mary ; or of parents able to provide for 
them private tutors. The educational history of these emigrants 
is an interesting subject for investigation. 

The modification of the character of the descendants of Eng- 
lishmen on this soil, already spoken of, was brought about mainly 
by their situation. But during the last quarter of the eighteenth 
century there had come into their life a new force, — faith in the 
power of ideas. Down to that time Anglo-Americans, like their 
progenitors, were men severely practical, and averse to general 



The History of the People of the United States. 17 

propositions. Their faith in the power of creeds and dogmas, 
religious and political, was steadfast. They believed in heavy- 
battalions and serried ranks, but with them faith in the power of 
ideas was not even a conception. Their legislation related to 
affairs, not to systems ; and the doctrinaire was not known within 
their borders. But for the last century it has been different, and 
this difference is due to Jefferson. Where Jefferson got his ideal- 
ism is a mystery ; for though he has many disciples, he had no 
known master. It is usual to attribute it to the influence of 
French writers — Rousseau especially ; but the vitality and per- 
manence of this element in his character suggest an original rather 
than an acquired force. About Jefferson as the head of a party, 
as an administrator, and even as a man, opinions may differ; 
but there can be little doubt that he was the first statesman who 
had faith in the sufficiency of ideas not merely as tests of the 
validity of political institutions, but as a power to subvert arbi- 
trary government, and overthrow errors however strongly in- 
trenched in ancient wrong. In this respect perhaps he stands 
first among thinkers, and certainly is among the greatest of those 
who have profoundly and beneficently modified the character of an 
entire people. His influence seems destined to affect the thought 
of mankind. 

De Tocqueville has noticed this change. " The Americans," he 
says, " are much more addicted to the use of general ideas than the 
English, and entertain a much greater relish for them : this ap- 
pears very singidar at first, when it is remembered that the two 
nations have the same origin, that they lived for centuries under 
the same laws, and that they incessantly interchange their opinions 
and their manners. . . . They have no philosophical school of their 
own, . . . yet they have a philosophical method common to the 
whole people." The way may have been prepared for this change, 
as he suggests, by their democratic habits, but Jefferson was the 
founder of the school of political idealists. He struck the key- 
note, first heard in his " Summary View," in 1774, and with a 
louder strain sent it round the world in the great Declaration. 
If one would see the change produced by Jefferson, let him read 
the Declaration of Rights by the Congress of 1774, and then the 
Declaration of Independence of 1776. One is a specification as 
cold as an indictment to be tried by a petit jury ; the other, a 
trumpet call to the race and to the ages. It was the comprehen- 
siveness of Jefferson's immortal Declaration which made it power- 
ful in one generation to sever the bands of an empire, and in an- 



18 The History of the People of the United States. 

other to break the shackles of four millions of slaves, and in the 
present — but who shall forecast the future of Ireland, or limit 
the potency of Jefferson's words? To redress the balance be- 
tween England and her colonies he invoked the power of ideas. 
He thus added to the armory of a struggling people a new weapon, 
— now the dynamics of nationalities, — restless, resistless, unas- 
sailable by fleets or armies. 

This force, which Jefferson set in motion, sometimes took a direc- 
tion which he did not contemplate, and of which he woidd not 
have approved. The real inspiration of the young statesmen who 
forced the war of 1812 was less the local cry of " free trade and 
sailors' rights" than an aspiration towards nationality, caught not 
from Jefferson, indeed, — for the father of State-rights was not a 
nationalist, — but for which they were indebted, nevertheless, to 
Jefferson's idealism : an aspiration to which Webster gave utter- 
ance at Bunker Hill in words never forgotten, " Our country, our 
whole country, and nothing but our country ; " and again, even 
more effectively, in the Senate Chamber, in those other words, 
" the Union, one and inseparable," taken up by the people and 
realized after four years of civil war. 

The advent of such a force into the life of a people is rare, and 
when apprehended in its full significance it is one of the most im- 
pressive events in their history ; and its recognition is a test of his- 
toric insight. It is America's contribution to political philosophy ; 
and if it be thought to belong to politics rather than to history, it 
is, nevertheless, an event inseparably connected with the history of 
the people of the United States, and is fast becoming a part of the 
history of the human race. As the race moves down through the 
ages, it has a life and progress which includes the life and prog- 
ress of every nationality. Into this mighty stream come affluents 
which bear on their surface traces of the soil and vegetation of 
their sources, and these mark the differences between nations. 

Mr. McMaster's book is a valuable contribution to our history, 
and will be the cause of work better than its own. His industri- 
ous collection of materials, and his effective arrangement and 
courageous presentation of them, cannot fail to stimulate other 
workers in the same field. But he does not always discriminate 
as to the value of authorities, and his history suffers somewhat in 
consequence. Observations in science, unless made under condi- 
tions which insure accuracy, are of little value ; and this is begin- 
ning to be recognized in respect to history. No conclusions should 
be drawn from the unsupported testimony of such travelers as 



The History of the People of the United States. 19 

Anbury or Brissot ; and sectarian and party prejudices often ren- 
der worthless the works of native historians. 

With these observations we take leave of Mr. McMaster's his- 
tory. Where we have received so much, and of so great value, it 
is ungracious to ask for more, or for something different ; but our 
just claims upon Mr. McMaster are limited only by his ability. 
His series of historical monographs is accepted with gratitude ; 

but if he has 

" left half-told 
The story " 

which he is able to tell in full, — and certain vital signs leave lit- 
tle doubt on that point, — he must forgive us if we are not entirely 
satisfied with what he has already done. 

Mellen Chamberlain. 
Boston, Mass. 



,L22?^ °^ CONGRESS 



011 802 254 3 g 



